The orangutan, the strangler fig and the photographer — a story of entwined lives

I’m thrilled for Tim Laman, who has just won the 2016 Wildlife Photographer of the Year award for this stunning shot of an orangutan climbing the pillar root of a strangler fig (Ficus stupenda) to feast on ripe figs.

There is a sweet irony to Laman’s winning photo. It was thanks to an image of an orangutan that Laman ever visited Indonesia, where he first became a fig biologist and later developed the skills that would enable him to take photos of life in the rainforest canopy.

Back in 1986, Laman had been at Harvard University studying for a PhD when he saw a poster advertising a research assistant’s job in Indonesian Borneo. The poster featured an image (below) from The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace, Laman’s future hero.

Laman got the job, put his studies on hold and travelled to Borneo, where he fell in love with the rainforest. His life tilted in a new direction. For the next few years, he studied strangler figs — important plants whose figs feed orangutans and dozens of other wildlife species.

To understand these fascinating plants he had to climb the giant trees on which the stranglers grow. It was up there in the rainforest canopy that Tim found his true vocation — capturing phenomenal images of rare and endangered wildlife. Congratulations Tim!

Notes:

I’m doubly grateful to Tim Laman. First, for his meticulous research on strangler figs, which helped me during my own doctoral research on these plants. Second, for the help he provided when I was researching my book about fig trees Ladders to Heaven / Gods, Wasps and Stranglers. Laman is the star of Chapter 7.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London. For more details of the awards, visit the website.

Full caption for Laman’s winning photo:

Entwined lives by Tim Laman – Winner, Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016: A young male orangutan makes the 30-metre (100-foot) climb up the thickest root of the strangler fig that has entwined itself around a tree emerging high above the canopy. The backdrop is the rich rainforest of the Gunung Palung National Park, in West Kalimantan, one of the few protected orangutan strongholds in Indonesian Borneo. The orangutan has returned to feast on the crop of figs. He has a mental map of the likely fruiting trees in his huge range, and he has already feasted here. Tim knew he would return and, more important, that there was no way to reach the top – no route through the canopy – other than up the tree. But he had to do three days of climbing up and down himself, by rope, to place in position several GoPro cameras that he could trigger remotely to give him a chance of not only a wide‐angle view of the forest below but also a view of the orangutan’s face from above. This shot was the one he had long visualized, looking down on the orangutan within its forest home. GoPro HERO4 Black; 1/30 sec at f2.8; ISO 231.